Using traditional hand-drawn cartoon animation techniques and returning to the core vales of courage and love, new feature 3-D animated film The Dreams of Jinsha is one of 15 up for consideration this year at the Oscars.
"Nowadays there is only one child in one family in our society, the young generation tends to be selfish and self-centered, just like the leading character Xiao Long," explained writer and producer Su Xiaohong. "Going through fights against bad characters, he develops courage and learns to care for others…we are trying to tell the young generation that love and courage is what we need."
Su said that the film is about the selfish boy Xiao Long, who in a dream, travels back in time to 3,500-years-ago ancient China.
"In a place called Jinsha Kingdom, there is mysterious evil energy trying to destroy the kingdom, Xiao Long finds he has a natural super power and works together with Princess Jinsha and an elf to fight the dark energy and help Jinsha Kingdom to maintain peace. He also learns love and courage through the process," Su explained.
Choosing not to employ modern special effects or new animation technology, The Dreams of Jinsha is a purely hand-drawn film, according to director Chen Deming. "The film is really 'made in China,'" Chen explained. "We have used traditional hand-drawing techniques to make the film, it took us five years and 80 million yuan ($11 million) to finish. Every single detail of the characters in every single cell is drawn by hand, hand-drawn pictures take more time and energy than computer-generated images, but we believe it looks more realistic and alive," he said.
Apart from using hand-drawings for the film, the team decided to use a large number of traditional Chinese landscapes as backdrops. "We want the audience to see the film and know immediately it is a Chinese cartoon, not American, not Japanese, therefore we used beautiful Chinese landscapes which are very unique trademarks, for instance, Jiuzhaigou Valley is included in the film," Chen explained.
Having already screened at leading international film festivals, distributor Gu Guoqing said that it is great that a Chinese cartoon animation is being noticed overseas. "We went to several international film festivals, including Cannes in May, I got great feedback at those festivals, they were impressed with our Chinese-styled cartoon elements," Gu said. "The Dreams of Jinsha is a good example of a Chinese cartoon film being accepted and well-received overseas, it is very encouraging for us and other Chinese cartoon makers" Gu added.
Gu said that he thinks the film will also do well at the Chinese box office. "Cartoon film series Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf during the spring festivals of 2009 and 2010 got amazing box office results, around 100 million yuan ($14 million). They proved that cartoon movies can be successful and profitable. We are encouraged by this and have great confidence in The Dreams of Jinsha and Chinese cartoon films."
Editor: Liu Fang
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